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The Records of an Ancient Lodge THE RECORDS OF AN ANCIENT LODGE. BY. W. PEED. VERNON, P.M. NO. 58, S.C. BELIEVING that anything which tends to throw a light upon the ancient working of the Craft must be of more or less interest to the brethren generally, we have for some time past devoted our leisure to the ransacking of lodge records whenever or wherever they could be obtained. The results of some of our investigations in connection with the Loclge of Kelso, whose records date from 1701, and the Lodge of Yetholm, which was started in the ever-memorable year of 1745, have already appeared in these pages and in the Scottish Freemason, in which we are now giving extracts from the minute books of the Lodge of St. Ebbe, No. 70 on the roll of Scottish lodges, whose admirably kept records date from 1757. In the present series of papers we purpose giving extracts from the minute book of a lodge which claims to be one of the oldest lodges in Scotland. Bro. Murray Lyon, in his admirable work, the " History of the Loclge of Edinburgh," says truly that " The Scotch are less ambitious than the English in their ascription of remote antiquity to the introduction of the Masonic Fraternity into their country. While their southern neighbours," he says " hold it to have been organized at York, in the time of Athelstane, A.D . 926, Scottish Freemasons are content to trace their descent from the builders of the Abbeys of Holyrood, Kelso, Melrose, and Kilwinning, the Cathedral of Glasgow, and other ecclesiastical fabrics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries." If , in the absence of documentary evidence, we were to accept the dates of the erection of these ecclesiastical buildings as the dates of the introduction of Masonry into the various districts of Scotland, and the lodges now representing these districts were to take rank accordingly, it would be found that Kelso stood first, Edinburgh second, Melrose third , and Kilwinning fourth. Kelso Abbey was finished ancl solemnly dedicated to St. Mary and St. John on the 2nd of May, 1128 , the year Holyrood was begun, while Melrose was not erected till 1136 , and Kilwinning till 1140. Upon the roll of Scottish lodges, however, Kilwinning stands as No. 0, Edinburgh No. 1, Kelso No. 58, and Melrose, not having ownedfealty to the Grand Loclge, has no standing—is, in fact, unrecognised. It is from the records of this unrecognised lodge that we purpose making extracts. There are very few lodges, either in England or Scotland, which can produce documentary evidence of having been in existence over two hundred years ; but this the lodge under oon- W sideration can do, and while we regret the position it occupies in, or rather out of , the Masonic world, we cannot but reverence it for its antiquity when we remember that its records date in almost unbroken succession from the year 1674 down to the present time. We are aware that the field which we are now gleaning has been pre- viously gone over by other Masonic gatherers ; but as we have never seen the result of their researches, and believing that there are many similarly situated with ourselves, we now lay before the readers of the Masomc Magazine what we have been able to pick up. Even in a well gleaned field the latest searcher may pick up a few handsful of grain which lay unnoticed by those who had preceded him. That such is the case in the present instance we have strong reason to believe, as, in looking over the old documents of Melrose Lod ge, the first which arrested our attention was a copy of the ancient charges, which appears to have been overlooked by others. A verbatim copy of this charge we had the pleasure of sending to Bro. Hughan, who published it in the last number of this magazine. It is worthy of note that the place of meeting of this old lodge, down to the year 1743, was not at Melrose, but at Newstead, or Neusteid as it is called in the old documents. It is situated on the right bank of the Tweed, about a mile east from Melrose, and stands upon part of the Roman station of Trimontium. It was the stead of the abbey founded by David I., and it was situated about midway between the two religious houses of Mailros and Melros . As there is a great similarity in the names of these two religious houses, and the one is apt to be confounded with the other, we think a short account of the former will not be out of place here. Mailros was established by Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, in the year 636, in the reign of Oswald, King of Northumbria ; Coldingham, Tyningham, and Abercorn, belonging to the same episcopate, were founded not long after. The first Abbot was Fata , selected by Aidan himself, and under him St. Boisil, or Boswell,* was Prior, and it was while these holy men held office , in the year 651, that the famous St. Cuthbert became an inmate of the monastery of Mailros, in which he succeeded to the office of Prior on the death of Prior . Boisil in 664. The monastery was burned by Kenneth II., in 839, but was rebuilt not long after. From 1098 down to 1136 Mailros continued a dependency of Coldingham, when David I. exchanged the church of St. Mary of Berwick for it, and annexed it to his house of Melros which he had founded about two miles farther up the Tweed. It was at the village of Newstead, which lay half-way between these two religions houses, that the loclge held its meetings. When they first held them there is nothing now to prove, but from the fact that the lodge was large and flourishing in the middle of the seven- teenth century, and that reference is macle to former years of which the minute book contains no record, we can safely claim for it the indefinate antiquity of an existence from " time immemorial." Like most of these ancient minute books, the want of chronological con- tinuity is very confusing, aud one has to be very careful in the search for a continuous journal of the transactions of the lodge. The minute book, which is a small quarto volume, contains 284 pages, from page 1 to 233 being- numbered in regular order, but on the last-named page, after the number, we find the following notice :—" Turn to the beginning of this side of this Book," which being clone by turning the book upside down, and beginning at the end, we find the first page after the fly leaf numbered as 234, and then regularly numbered for the following fifty pages, until we come again to the bottom of page 233, where the break occurred. But although the pages are thus regularly numbered, the minutes are by no means regularly entered ; sometimes they are at one end of the book and sometimes at the other, and * From whom the picturesque village of St. Boswdls, situated 'about three miles from Melrose, takes its name. one page will sometimes contain entries of various dates, while again several pages contain entries under the same date. For instance, on the very first page, where one would naturally expect to find the first entry, there are several entries, or rather memoranda, but the most conspicuous is a line in large characters across the whole page thus— neufteid the 13 of Januarie 1678. This, of course, is misleading, but a glance at the page shows that it has been used for scribbling purposes, and for the casting up of sums, one memorandum bearing the date 1686, the others being undated; in fact, one of them, evidently much older than the date above given, runs thus :— " at melrois ye day of reseived from Wra draw ——- nist ¦— 04 — ii — 8 and for ye einglyshe monnie — 03 — 03 — 6 Souma 7 — 15 —02 and of that guven out to robert mein master and — 3 — 5 — 0 (4— 9 — 0" On the following page (2) the entry is dated 1729, and on page 3 there are two entries of the respective dates 1679 and 1682 ; but on page 4, there is what is no doubt the earliest entry in this book, which runs as follows :— "28 dor 1674.— The sd day it is ordained be the voyoe of the lodge y' no Mr should tak aprentice undr seven yeirs being bound, as also it was condecendet on, y* wn any aprentise is entered they most give aught—pund Scotts for meit & drink & fortie Shilling Scotts for the use of the box, by & allow ym suficient gloves. " mair the forsd day it was coudescendet on y* w" ever a prentice is mad frie mason he must pay four pund Scotts wch four pund Scotts is to be stowet at the pleasour of the lodge, by and allow ym sufficient gloves, and it is also condescendet of by thes afordsds y' no preutise nor fellow craft shall be receved bot on. Saint Jon's day, heir after the forsd day." The opposite page (5) is occupied by a drawing representing two pairs of compasses interlaced upon a shield. As the ground is painted blue and the compasses yellow, they might be described as compasses or, saltier-wise upon a field azure. Three of the compartments thus formed are ornamented by a trefoil with irregular stem. The colour is laid on very thick and smudgy, and is not in keeping with the drawing, which is very carefully executed.
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